The Swedish Academy has announced that there will be no Nobel Prize in Literature this year. The decision comes in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, in which photographer Jean-Claude Arnault—who is married to one academy member and friends with others—has been accused of abusing and assaulting at least eighteen women. The Complete Review has a comprehensive list of stories and reactions to the news, including a New Yorker piece where Alexandra Schwartz writes, “It seems inevitable that all this chaos will damage the prestige of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Maybe the bigger surprise is that it has managed to maintain its lustre for so long. Why, after all, do we get so worked up about which writer a committee of Swedish intellectuals chooses to anoint in any given year?”
Media conglomerate Tronc has agreed to recognize unions for its Chicago publications, including the Chicago Tribune. Earlier this year, Tronc lost an effort to halt the unionization of the Los Angeles Times.
Ronan Farrow, who was recently awarded the Pulitzer prize for his reporting on Harvey Weinstein, talks about his new book, War on Peace.
Junot Diaz has withdrawn from a Sydney literary festival after being accused of sexual misconduct and verbal abuse by at least four women. Diaz released a statement through his literary agent. On Twitter, Roxane Gay wrote, “Now, I don't know how fans of this work proceed from here. I do know we need to have a more vigorous conversation that simply saying, ‘Junot Diaz is cancelled,’ because that does not cancel misogyny or how the literary community protects powerful men at the expense of women.”
At the New York Review Daily, Reah Bravo writes about her experiences as an intern for Charlie Rose.
Tonight at the Strand bookstore in New York City, photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto talks with Darius Himes about his new book, Portraits, which highlights Sugimoto’s images of wax figures.
